The present invention relates to a photographic material feeder apparatus for cutting a strip of photographic material to sheets of a given length and transferring the photographic material sheets to an exposure station, and more particularly, to a photographic material feeder apparatus for producing and supplying print sheets of different sizes from a roll of photographic material paper for printing in an exposure station.
Photographic printers are known for printing images from a negative film (referred to as film hereinafter) onto sheets of photographic material (referred to as papers hereinafter). More specifically, a strip of the paper provided in a roll form is cut into pieces of a length which are then transferred to the exposure station for printing. As the paper of a roll form is accommodated in a paper magazine, its leading end is drawn out for feeding. When it is desired to print a different size of images at the exposure station in the photographic printer, paper sheets of a corresponding size have to be supplied.
For allowing the selection of a desired size of the paper, there may be provided a plurality of paper rolls of different widths in their respective magazines. The paper of the desired size can be supplied by selecting and loading its magazine. In common, the print papers are classified by size into E, L, 2E, 2L, European, panorama, HDTV, 1/8, 1/6, 1/4, and other formats. Therefore, a number of the paper magazines are prepared and once one of the sizes is selected, its magazine is loaded to replace an existing one. This action will disturb more or less the efficiency of the exposure process during printing.
In addition, the size of images in frames of a film is classified into two types: a half size and a full size. The half size is equal to 1/2 of a full frame and its film images are thus elongated widthwisely of the film or at a right angle to the lengthwise direction of the film. If the half size image is projected in the same manner as for the full size, it lengthwise edges may be off the paper. For compensation, the film with half size images is set at a right angle to the feeding direction of the paper for "transverse" printing. In general, the film is oriented in parallel to the feeding of the paper for "longitudinal" printing.
It is however common that the film carrying half size images and the film carrying full size images are mixedly loaded for printing operations. The operator is thus required to determine the feeding direction of a film whenever a film carrying different image sizes is loaded. This will decrease the efficiency of a printing process.
As an increasing number of different print sizes of images are introduced, paper rolls with different widths have to be supplied. The number of magazines accommodating the paper rolls is thus increased and the replacement of the magazines will take a considerable length of time, thus disturbing the routine of the painting operation. It will be most difficult for the operator to select one from a number of the paper magazines. As the printer apparatus requires help from the operator, it cannot be operated in a fully automatic mode.
A number of the paper rolls may be varied in sensitivity thus requiring a troublesome color compensation step during the printing process. Also, some of the paper rolls which are used with less frequency may become deteriorated with time.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a photographic material feeder apparatus capable of printing different sizes of film images efficiently on photographic papers which are selected and supplied automatically from one or a minimum number of paper rolls.